Defenseless
Page 33
I wondered if Vince believed in God.
“And I told you that day in my office, Meloni, if I’d thought for a second I was putting your sister in danger, I wouldn’t have done it. Who knew you’d drag her onto the campus?”
My silence allowed them all to collectively ponder Vince’s question. Slowly but surely, all eyes in the suddenly stifling room turned to me.
Shannon, more calmly than I expected, said, “Wait a minute. You knew what he was up to and you didn’t tell us?”
I took a deep breath and lay my head on the chopping block. “I hooked Cassie up with Elliot to tutor her for her SATs. But I never would have done that if I thought I was there as a plant. And by the time Vince told me his plan, Cassie was already missing. And I didn’t think Vince wanted anyone else to know until the whole thing was over. . . .”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Vince said. “Your first loyalty should always be to me.”
Though I was thinking it, I didn’t have the heart to tell Vince that I would have told the girls if my head hadn’t been so muddled with trying to find Cassie. I just never got the chance.
Shannon scoffed at Vince. “You should have told me what you were up to so I wouldn’t have used your miserable mug as target practice every afternoon.”
“All right. That’s enough fun for one day, girlies.” Vince had never walked through the doorway into my room and had already pivoted to leave. Over his shoulder he said, “Meloni, take a week off or whatever the docs say, and then all of you back to work as usual. I suspended Jeff this morning for insubordination—he was telling Carlyle every time I took a shit.”
“Byron Eckert,” I said. “Carlyle’s right-hand man. That’s why she was getting antsy.”
“She?” Shannon said.
“Yeah, but a man in more ways than name only. She must have known Jeff was talking to Carlyle and she got scared that maybe she was out of the loop.”
“Well, Jeff Kendall’s out of my loop for the time being,” Vince said. “Of course his old man will make me an offer I can’t refuse and I’ll have to take him back eventually, but I still have your empty seat to fill, so, Meloni, you’re back in.” He raised his arm in the air for a wave goodbye, and then lumbered out and was gone without so much as a sayonara.
Shannon got up to leave. “I’m out of here too. Let’s wrap this reunion up so I can grab a smoke. And they’re not keeping you here long, Mari. Sending you home with some antibiotics or something. That river was pretty mucky. It’s probably an illegal waste dump. They don’t want you getting an infection and dying now that you’re a big hero. Other than that, your lungs are probably cleaner than mine. Come on, we’ll take you for a spin around this depressing joint before we leave. You can go visit your sister down the hall.”
Laurie Nightingale and Nurse Beth loaded me into a wheelchair. Beth took the reins and we began an exciting trek down the hospital corridors. At the nurses’ station Laurie detoured for a quick chat while Beth put my wheels on hold. Laurie walked back to us, nodded at Beth, and we were on our way again. Shannon excused herself at a bank of elevators so she could head outside for her smoke and an early escape. “See you all later. I’m going back to the office and then I need a drink. Laurie, Beth? About seven? The Fez? Mari, we’ll get you a to-go bag. Vox rocks, right?”
Beth shook her head in disgust and Laurie filled Beth and me in on what she had learned at the nurses’ station. “Cassie’s down in the lab getting some blood work done. Your parents rode down with her.”
Beth nodded at the information but continued pushing me down the corridor, away from my room. At the end of the hall we stopped and she rolled me through an open doorway where two beds lay side by side. One empty, the other—
“Hey, babe.” His weak voice rose from the bed nearest the window.
My heart fluttered in my chest.
In Elliot’s bathroom, after he’d been shot, Mike didn’t fall. He let go, let his body slide along the wall to the floor. And that halcyon look in his eyes before they closed for the last time had screamed so loudly of peaceful surrender that I too had simply let him go without a fight. We had both surrendered him to death so quickly that not for one second did I believe he could still be alive.
Beth rolled my chair to the side of the bed where Mike lay flat, wrapped in gauze from neck to waist. His bare arms lay outstretched by his sides.
Cassie was fine. Mike was alive. I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks to a God I continued to hope would disprove my current agnostic beliefs and actually turn out to exist.
When my lids opened, the tears dripped down my face in a flood. Mike’s devilish smile broke through the drugged pain of his face, and he winked.
I felt a fever coming on. I couldn’t catch my breath. The room was spinning. I felt faint. I still had no immunity to Mike’s infectious wink.
“Hi, slugger,” he said. “You okay?”
Laurie and Beth were already backing out of the room.
“Hey, girls,” I said. “Do me a favor on your way out? Close the door after you, and put the Do Not Disturb sign up.”
“Hah!” Laurie laughed and pulled the door closed, leaving Mike and me alone.
I pulled myself out of my wheelchair, and sat softly on the side of his bed. I ran my hands lightly over his gauzed chest. “You rotten bastard,” I said. “I was convinced you were dead.”
“And that’s my fault?”
“No. I’m just a pessimist.”
He lifted his hand unsteadily and stroked my face. “We’re quite the disabled pair, aren’t we, babe?”
“That term of endearment is getting a little shopworn. Can’t you come up with anything besides ‘babe’?”
“You mean like one that’s just for you?”
“Yes,” I whispered, muzzling his mouth with my lips. “Mmm . . . Speak to me with that unbelievable kisser.”
“I’m all lips, babe, but can’t we save the talking for later?”
“Who said anything about talking?”
“Whatever you say. Darlin’.”
About the Author
Celeste Marsella received her B.A. and M.A. from NYU and her J.D. from New York Law School. She is a member of four state bars—New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Florida—and has actively practiced in all except Florida. In Rhode Island, where her daughter was born, she worked in a gritty criminal law firm. Celeste now writes full time and is currently at work on her next novel in this series, Perfectly Criminal, coming from Dell in Spring 2009.
If you enjoyed Defenseless, don’t miss Shannon’s story:
PERFECTLY
CRIMINAL
A NOVEL BY
CELESTE MARSELLA
ON SALE APRIL 2009
DEFENSELESS
A Dell Book / October 2008
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Celeste Marsella
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Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33814-7
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